I am also confident that Justice Gableman understood the nature of the arguments being made for his recusal and, in fact, made clear that he based his decision on "the circumstances of the case ... and the submissions of the parties."

'Because he said so,' offers Prof. Rick of Gableman, who doesn't exactly enjoy a reputation for honesty, having been prosecuted by the Wisconsin Judicial Commission for lying about another judge's professional record.

If Prof. Rick is so confident now that Gableman "understood the nature of the arguments being made," where was his confidence that Gableman understood the procedural history of State v. Reuben Lee Mitchell?

If Prof. Rick's level of confidence in the latter equaled his present confidence in Gableman's profound understanding, then Prof. Rick would have to admit that Gableman knew full well that he was baldly lying during his political campaign in 2008. But you'll never hear that from Prof. Rick, whose own partisan expediencies regularly trump whatever pretense to principled scholarship he's apparently duped the Journal-Sentinel into accepting. That farce is worse than the sloppy writing.

* Translation: Fiercely partisan Republican, in keeping with the Judicial Commission's mandate to "maintain public confidence in the judiciary."

Uh huh.

"When they introduced themselves, three of the nominees referred to their long-term marriages as qualifications to serve on the Commission. One of these, Eileen Burnett of De Pere, spoke at some length of her experience as a homemaker and expert in abstinence education. What she didn’t mention was her record of donating $5,350 directly to Republican campaigns over the past eight years." — Rebecca Kemble

Although Justice Gableman's Order claims that he "considered the circumstances of this case" and "the submissions of the parties," I conclude that nothing in Justice Gableman’s Order demonstrates that Justice Gableman actually considered the submissions of the District Attorney. Rather, because Justice Gableman's Order either intentionally or inadvertently misstates the grounds of the District Attorney's motion, the Order contains no reasoned basis for the Justice's conclusion that his recusal is "neither warranted nor justified."

The Order inaccurately asserts that the District Attorney seeks recusal because "the Michael Best & Friedrich firm was involved in the cases and had previously represented me." Actually, as I have stated previously, the District Attorney explained in the initial and supplemental filings that he seeks recusal not because Justice Gableman has been personally represented by Michael Best, but rather because Justice Gableman received allegedly free legal services from Michael Best.

Yet, nowhere in Justice Gableman’s Order is there any reference to payment (or absence of payment) for legal services, the fee arrangement with Michael Best, free legal services, a gift of legal services, or valuable consideration for the fee arrangement. None of these words, or any synonyms, appears in the Order.

In other words, the Wisconsin Supreme Court's so-called "conservatives" continue to rule by fiat and Mike "Peppercorn" Gableman hasn't changed a bit in terms of his "deliberate or accidental" misrepresentations.

After all, those are how Mike Gableman got elected in the first place.

However, those were more deliberate and deliberative than accidental misrepresentations, as Mike Gableman himself admitted. Indeed if they were accidental misrepresentations then failure to understand a relatively straightforward appellate case should have disqualified him from the State of Wisconsin's highest appeals court right off the bat.

Wisconsin Republicans must be real proud of this character. But nobody else should be proud of what he's done to the reputation of this court.

PolitiFact grants Willard "Mitt" Rmoney a "Mostly True" for misrepresenting a decision of the Supreme Court because Rmoney is a politician: "PolitiFact focuses on political speech rather than legal speech and judged by that standard Romney is pretty close to accurate."

[Willard "Mitt" Rmoney] is managing to turn the only possible silver lining in Chief Justice John Roberts's ObamaCare salvage operation—that the mandate to buy insurance or pay a penalty is really a tax—into a second political defeat.

First of all, the Supreme Court didn't say that buying insurance was a tax. And it barely said the penalty for not buying insurance was a tax, only that the penalty was a constitutional exercise of Congress's power to tax, and one that was well supported by a host of federal precedent.

As the Chief Justice put it for one majority of the Court:

Although the payment will raise considerable revenue, it is plainly designed to expand health insurance coverage.

And what the WSJ editorial mandarins refer to as a "salvage operation" was in fact an exercise of the Court's deference to the will of the elected legislature, the exercise of which in other circumstances Republicans who claim to be "judicial conservatives" rejoice over.

This time they just don't like the result that it led to, in the latest example of why such claims to "judicial conservatism" are fraudulent.

July 3, 2012

Perhaps because the gun law has three exceptions to the prohibitions on carrying, and the law says "any" of them apply. In one exception, the law says a judge has the power to grant — or not grant — permission to conceal-carry licensees and in another exception the law says a DA can conceal-carry in court.

Because "any" of the exceptions apply, the judges chose the one that inconveniences the DA, and the judge has quite a bit more stroke in the courtroom than has the DA. For example a judge can tell a DA in her courtroom to sit down, be quiet, stop being such a dick, etc.

The Supreme Court wrote just a few months ago that a petition for a supervisory writ won't be accepted unless the lower court's duty is "plain" and the alleged violation by the subordinate court judge is "clear."

I don't think either of those elements are present here.

Furthermore if the court did accept this petition, it would potentially be in the position of having to contradict itself on the questions of supervisory and original jurisdiction — these are two separate grants of power to the court in the Wisconsin constitution and the Wisconsin statutes — for the third time in roughly one year.

What I find amusing is that the court combined these two separate grants of authority in its Act 10 decision in June, 2011, and a few months later laid down the law with respect to the high burden — the "clear" and the "plain" bits — of establishing its supervisory jurisdiction, which the "conservative" majority itself clearly had not done in the petition against Dane County Circuit Court Judge Maryann Sumi.

The attorney(s) who drafted this petition recognize the distinction between supervisory and original jurisdiction, hence the "or in the alternative" language and the separate references to 809.70 and 809.71 (the distinction between which was also discussed at this blog pursuant to some nonsense that was published at the Marquette Law School Faculty blog by a young Federalist Society pinhead).